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A comedy is entertainment consisting of jokes and satire, intended to make an audience laugh.〔 For ancient Greeks and Romans a comedy was a stage-play with a happy ending. In the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings and a lighter tone. In this sense Dante used the term in the title of his poem, ''La Divina Commedia''. The phenomena connected with laughter and that which provokes it has been carefully investigated by psychologists and agreed upon the predominating characteristics are incongruity or contrast in the object, and shock or emotional seizure on the part of the subject. It has also been held that the feeling of superiority is an essential factor: thus Thomas Hobbes speaks of laughter as a "sudden glory." Modern investigators have paid much attention to the origin both of laughter and of smiling, as well as the development of the "play instinct" and its emotional expression. Much comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetitiveness, and the effect of opposite expectations, but there are many recognized genres of comedy. Satire and political satire use ironic comedy used to portray persons or social institutions as ridiculous or corrupt, thus alienating their audience from the object of humor. Parody borrows the form of some popular genre, artwork, or text but uses certain ironic changes to critique that form from within (though not necessarily in a condemning way). Screwball comedy derives its humor largely from bizarre, surprising (and improbable) situations or characters. Black comedy is defined by dark humor that makes light of so-called dark or evil elements in human nature. Similarly scatological humor, sexual humor, and race humor create comedy by violating social conventions or taboos in comedic ways. A comedy of manners typically takes as its subject a particular part of society (usually upper class society) and uses humor to parody or satirize the behavior and mannerisms of its members. Romantic comedy is a popular genre that depicts burgeoning romance in humorous terms, and focuses on the foibles of those who are falling in love. == Etymology == The word "comedy" is derived from the Classical Greek ''κωμῳδία'', which is a compound either of ''κῶμος'' (revel) or ''κώμη'' (village) and ''ᾠδή'' (singing): it is possible that ''κῶμος'' itself is derived from ''κώμη'', and originally meant a village revel. The adjective "comic" (Greek κωμικός), which strictly means that which relates to comedy is, in modern usage, generally confined to the sense of "laughter-provoking".〔Francis MacDonald Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy, 1934.〕 The word came into modern usage through the Latin ''comoedia ''and Italian ''commedia'' and has, over time, passed through various shades of meaning.〔Oxford English Dictionary〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Comedy (drama)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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